“What? You’re joking, right?”
“Nope. Dominick’s on Navy Pier. Seven-thirty or so.” He could already picture her there, in the soft light of Dominick’s, wearing some-thing—anything—other than her conservative work clothes.
“And you want me to come with you,” she said incredulously, watching his brown eyes for signs that he was just pulling her leg. Especially given the heated conversation they’d already had about the wisdom of hiring Lenny Doss.
“Yes, I do,” Evan said, straight-faced. She could always tell when he was joking, because even though he could keep his mouth still he always got a hint of a dimple on the left side. She used to think it was adorable.
There was no dimple now.
He wasn’t kidding.
“Why would I do that, Evan?” she asked. “Why would I go out and actively try to hire a guy like that?”
“Because you know I want to bring him on board.”
“And you know I’m adamantly against it.”
“And you know you’re wrong about that.”
“I do not!”
“Well, I do.” He took her by the arm and led her to his office, saying, “Technically, I’m your boss and you need to do what I ask you to.”
She wrenched free of his grasp and said, “Yeah, well, technically, I’m not working for your department, so you have to clear this kind of thing with your stepmother, and I think if she reviewed both sides of this issue, she’d be inclined to agree with me.”
“Not if she looked at the facts.”
“What facts could possibly condone what he’s done?” Meredith wanted to know.
Evan stopped walking and looked at her. “Nothing can condone what he’s done, but his statistics are impressive and that makes him worth considering, even if you don’t like his past.”
“It’s his future I’m concerned with.”
They rounded the corner into Evan’s office and he said, “That’s why you need to consider all the facts, not just the Internet gossip you’ve looked up.”
She shot him a look of disagreement, but he was right. She’d known as soon as he’d mentioned Lenny Doss’s name that the guy was a ticking time bomb, so she’d gone online looking for evidence that proved her right, not evidence that proved her wrong.
Apparently Evan had done the opposite.
As usual.
“You’ve got to look at the statistics here.” He sat her down in his chair and leaned across her to type an Internet address into his computer. “Check out the numbers on WRFK,” he said, pointing at a chart on the computer screen. “This is about the time they moved from a regular news format to talk radio with Lenny Doss.”
Meredith leaned forward and looked, taking the mouse in hand and moving around the chart a bit to get a more detailed picture. “What month did they hire him?” she asked, concentrating on the demographics and the charted increase in listeners.
“February.” He pointed. “Right there.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She clicked on the date and checked for the entire programming schedule, to see if there was another reason that could account for all or some of the increase. “They also had religious programming on Sundays at that time,” she pointed out half-heartedly. Religious programming virtually never pulled in big ratings.
“Check the ratings,” Evan said, his voice ringing with smug confidence at what she’d find.
She checked. The religious programming had abysmal ratings. Worse than most. “Oh.”
“Exactly.”
Meredith frowned, looking for any evidence there might be that Evan was assigning too much credit to this one man. “When did they fire him?”
“They didn’t.”
“No?” Darn it, she should have armed herself with more specific information before meeting with Evan about this.
“He left for Gemini Broadcasting here.” He pointed at the computer screen again, leaning so close across Meredith that she could smell not only his cologne but the achingly familiar scent of his skin. “In November of the following year.”
“And the ratings went down,” Meredith observed, so distracted by the close proximity of Evan that she almost couldn’t concentrate on the matter at hand.
Evan, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be having any such problem being close to Meredith. He gave a chipper nod, his face devoid of anything other than triumph that Meredith appeared to be seeing the light, now that he was shining it directly in her eyes. “The ratings went way down.”
She went back to the search engine and typed in Gemini Broadcasting, just as Evan had a week earlier, and typed in the pertinent dates.
He waited a moment while she studied the higher ratings before saying, “See what I mean?”
She clicked off and rolled back in the chair to face him. “Yes, I do.”
“But you’re conflicted because, while you like what he could potentially do for the company, you don’t like what he stands for,” Evan said, trying to read the unaccustomed sternness in her eyes and her posture. Every time he got anywhere near her she tensed up and resisted whatever he was saying.
If she’d shown any form of emotion at all—which she hadn’t—he’d have thought her reaction to him was personal.
As it was, he could only conclude that she hated Lenny Doss, or what he stood for, so much that she felt angry at Evan for even wanting to hire him and for pointing out that there were good things to be considered in the process.
“Right,” she admitted, taking a short breath and moving slightly away from where Evan stood. The chair she was sitting in knocked against the desk behind her. “But as I’ve said before, I’m also hesitant about his potential as a liability. That’s really important,” she added.
“Fine. Check the e-mails he’s written to me about that,” Evan said, switching to another program and pulling up a folder in which he’d stored his correspondence with Lenny Doss. He kept a little more distance this time, not so much because he was afraid to get near her because of her reaction, but because he didn’t want to see her react by recoiling again.
If she did, he’d know it was on purpose and not just some small coincidence, and he didn’t want to know that. “Read them all, if it will make you feel better,” he said, stepping back and going to the small refrigerator under the picture window to take out a bottle of spring water and give himself something to do other than just stand there gazing at Meredith and trying to figure out how the years had only made her prettier instead of older.
“Okay.” She looked back at the screen. “Just give me a couple of minutes.”
He hadn’t thought she’d really do that, but it was nice to be away from her scrutiny for a moment, even though it seemed like forever that he stood there waiting for her to read through the e-mails.
One by one, date by date, she clicked through, stopping every once in a while to make a note on the small pad on his desk.
He noticed that her handwriting was still the same messy scrawl it had been in high school. Something about that small fact made him feel a little warmer inside.
A little more at home.
But that was all she gave in terms of comforting vibes. The rest of her was completely cool and impersonal. He tried to read the expression on her face, but though the face itself was undeniably familiar, some of the expressions she wore now were completely new to him. He had only his experience